Benghazi, Two Impeachments, and The Press

“All I can tell you is, I went after many things in the Bush Administration and a lot of reporters joined me in those efforts when there were things to be asked in the Bush Administration. With the Obama Administration sometimes I feel like it’s uh, I’m alone with a few other journalists and I cant say why that is, I don’t know” – Sheryl Attkisson

I was too young to remember much about Watergate, and Nixon’s subsequent resignation, but it was something, even as a child, I was aware was significant for some reason. I was old enough to watch Bill Clinton perjure himself over the Monica Lewinsky debacle. At that time, I thought, “he’s finished”, but as it turns out, I have no idea how politics works, he went on to a second term. So, I don’t have a sense of what all of this Benghazi noise means, in the overall picture of things.

Repeated requests for security, (13?) numerous attacks, (20), followed by the ultimate attack leading to 4 deaths, a confused response which included 2 stand down orders to prevent aid from reaching the compound, and then subsequent confused investigation that included state department chief of staff calling the deputy chief of mission and telling him not to talk to a congressman. The white house spokesman, and secretary of state, blaming benghazi on sequester cuts that wouldn’t happen for another 5 months or so, and now saying investigating the incident is “politicizing” it.

There’s a lot wrong with this picture. And there seems to be two camps: “ho-hum, nothing to see here” and “they were left to die in the middle of a terror attack for political reasons”. I might suggest there’s a third aspect, which falls into the latter camp’s list of grievances: What happened to the press? This is not the press that brought down Nixon. I think the change started with Bill Clinton. The impeachment was painted as a witch hunt, and while eventually, the answers were given, there was no hoped-for political advantage gained from it, quite the opposite, in fact. From that moment on, the press was firmly entrenched in the democrats’ pocket. That was the template for how they would cover Republicans from then on.

Mrs. Clinton’s role in this matter remains obscure, in part because the State Department’s Accountability Review Board did not interview her, amazingly enough. The review board protected all of the department’s higher-ups and blamed career officials down the ladder. The board is now itself under investigation by State’s inspector general, and Wednesday’s testimony revealed the sore feelings of career officers about the review board’s conduct. –wsj.com